


More than Blue

by furiosity



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 16:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5462753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furiosity/pseuds/furiosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shin-Ah reflects on destiny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More than Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moonsheen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonsheen/gifts).



Shin-Ah wakes with the dawn. An arrow whistles through the air nearby and _thwacks_ against the painted target Yoon made for Yona. Shin-Ah knows the sound so well he does not need to see. 

In another few minutes, the arrows will stop flying and he'll hear the muffled sounds of Yona and Hak bickering as he puts her through the forms with her wooden sword. It is a strange feeling, waking every day in a new place, yet knowing he is home.

To his left, Zeno is using most of Shin-Ah's headdress as a pillow. To avoid disturbing him, all Shin-Ah can do is lie still and gaze eastward. Yoon, asleep to Shin-Ah's right, will wake before too long, and with that, the day will begin, whether Jae-Ha and Kija -- the latest sleepers of them all -- like it or not.

Far to the east, a small fishing village wakes up to another day's work. A young woman stands outside a hut with a crooked roof, calling out to someone with an anxious face. A moment later, she rushes towards a thicket and extracts a mud-splattered toddler, cradles him to her chest, and descends the path to the river. Shin-Ah watches them with a peculiar ache in the middle of his chest: he will never know what it feels like to be scooped up and held like that. The only kind touch he ever knew as a child was Ao's hand, held out to him to cling onto when they walked together. The same hand would swat him if he so much as thought about something stupid.

Somewhere in the branches overhead, Ao the squirrel chitters a good morning greeting, as though she knows what Shin-Ah is thinking and wants to distract him. He watches her shimmy down the tree trunk towards him -- a flash of tail here, a squeak there -- but she gets distracted by something along the way and vanishes into the leaves again, rustling off into the distance. He could follow her with his gaze, but he's looked far enough for one morning. His grasp of his Dragon power is better with each day, but he cannot afford to be careless with it.

Before he left his old village to accompany Yona, he thought he understood the danger of the Blue, and he wanted so badly to keep the promise he made to Ao, no matter what. Now he knows that he will use all his power and more if it means keeping Yona from harm, and he's sure Ao would scold him for it, even if he knew that Yona was King Hiryuu's avatar.

Eyes that can see as far as the hearts of humans, so small, so easy to crush. Looking at the world through the eyes of a Dragon makes him feel immensely large, and yet he feels weak and ill-prepared, unless he's got his sword at his back. Yona is so small but so very strong, without any kind of special power or even a sword. Shin-Ah wishes he could be like her.

He remembers Ao, how happy he was to be free of the Dragon's curse, to be a simple human. Even though it meant death and regret at leaving Shin-Ah all alone, he died smiling.

Shin-Ah wouldn't want to lose his powers as they fade into the next Blue Dragon, leaving him blind and then dead. He wants to keep the powers for as long as Yona has need of them, and he wonders what Ao would say to that. Ao hated the Blue, but still he regretted having to let the curse pass to a child barely old enough to feed himself. But with Yona here, the cycle of reincarnation is at an end, at least until she leaves the world again. Which won't be for a very, very long time if Shin-Ah has anything to say about it.

All Ao ever knew was the village and his duty: to protect the village all alone while they shunned and feared him. He never had the chance to travel and see the world, never had someone tell him his eyes were beautiful. Just thinking about it makes Shin-Ah's heart constrict: he wishes so badly that Ao could have known what that feels like, but at the same time he is so happy that that Yona found Shin-Ah in his cave, not Ao.

He is the Blue Dragon, but that's not all he has.

He has Yona, holding Shin-Ah's face in her hands as she tells him she will always be there for him. He has Yoon, changing the compresses on his forehead when Shin-Ah is sick. He has Zeno, putting his chin on Shin-Ah's shoulder as they watch Yoon's fish stew bubble in the pot. He has Jae-Ha, trying once again to snatch Shin-Ah's mask away so he can look into his eyes. He has Hak, quietly joining him to spar with bared steel and treating the encounter seriously. He has Kija, who called him his little brother and often covers Shin-Ah with an extra blanket when he thinks Shin-Ah is sleeping.

Shin-Ah wishes Ao could have known such things in his lifetime, that he could have died with more to remember than death, solitude, and raising a lonely little boy doomed to repeat the same cycle. He wishes he could let Ao know that things are different for him. That Shin-Ah is no longer just the Blue Dragon, that he has received a name of his very own, that he is learning how to smile, and he wants to smile at so much more than a long-awaited death.

If Yona had been born two decades earlier, she would have come for Ao, and he would have had everything Shin-Ah has now. Shin-Ah would have been just another normal boy running around the Blue Dragon's Village, with friends and games and school-time lessons.

It makes Shin-Ah feel a little guilty, but he's glad that's not how it turned out.

Ao told him once that Shin-Ah would never have any friends, and he wasn't wrong. The people Shin-Ah travels with are his family.


End file.
